What app is this about, and its version: 2026.29.0~ynh1 What YunoHost version are you running: YunoHost 12.1.39 (stable) What type of hardware are you using: VPS bought online
Describe your issue
I’m using Cryptpad since a while.
In the last weeks I see an certificate error in my logs:
It says:
ERROR - Wrote file to /var/www/.well-known/acme-challenge-public/dP6pyEsgwPYNoTkszvMg0trbAEWk68zAsnLV1u98gLM, but couldn't download http://sandbox.cryptpad.maindomain.tld/.well-known/acme-challenge/dP6pyEsgwPYNoTkszvMg0trbAEWk68zAsnLV1u98gLM
and this is the file:
sudo ls -al /var/www/.well-known/acme-challenge-public/dP6pyEsgwPYNoTkszvMg0trbAEWk68zAsnLV1u98gLM
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 87 May 3 06:26 /var/www/.well-known/acme-challenge-public/dP6pyEsgwPYNoTkszvMg0trbAEWk68zAsnLV1u98gLM
All other domains (= a lot) work as expected.
So my guess is: it’s a cryptpad problem and not a generic YNH problem.
I also tried a solution found in the forum archive:
assuming you replace sandbox.cryptpad.maindomain.tld with your real sandbox cryptad domain.
i take note that there are two domains for cryptad, this is the sandbox one only that is failing. i don’t now much about cryptad installation…
It might happen that locally from yunohost you don’t have access to itself, this is only a verification done by yunohost letsencrypt client script.
This check can be deactivated with --no-check and there is a checkbox in web admin to disable it too.
The problem itself is easy to explain — the YunoHost package never deploys the nginx configuration for the sandbox domain automatically. What made the fix complicated is that there are three situations that trigger the issue:
Directly after installation — the config is never created
After every reboot — the config is missing at system startup
After domain actions in YunoHost (adding, removing domains, certificate renewal) — YunoHost runs regen-conf and reloads nginx multiple times
Each of these situations needed its own fix. The complete step-by-step guide is documented here:
Es hat eine Weile gedauert, den Fehler vollständig zu lokalisieren.
Das Problem selbst ist schnell erklärt – das YunoHost-Paket deployed die nginx-Konfiguration für die Sandbox-Domain nicht automatisch. Was die Lösung kompliziert hat: Es gibt drei Situationen die den Fehler auslösen:
Direkt nach der Installation – die Config wird nie erstellt
Nach jedem Reboot – die Config fehlt beim Systemstart
Nach Domain-Aktionen in YunoHost (Domain anlegen, löschen, Zertifikat erneuern) – YunoHost führt dabei regen-conf aus und lädt nginx mehrfach neu
Jede dieser Situationen brauchte eine eigene Lösung. Die vollständige Anleitung mit allen Schritten ist hier dokumentiert:
Thanks a lot, your solution allowed to renew the let’s-encrypt certificate!
That’s really great.
There is one small improvement / suggestion for your ‘Step 9: Create a Timer’ for other users:
Maybe you could give a hint (like that in step 3 and 7) that the user should adjust the pathname to their own settings / domainname.
And then there still is a second problem with my cryptpad instance (‘TypeError: Utils.Util.decodeUTF8 is not a function’) , maybe you also have a suggestion there?
Anyway. Thanks a lot for solving this certificate issue with Cryptpad!